1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a spool for winding an optical fiber, and more particularly to a spool for winding an optical fiber comprising flanges attached to each other using an ultrasonic fusion splicer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, in order to construct an information super-highway, there is a great demand for optical fibers which are used as optical signal transmission media in optical communication systems. They are typically wound on a spool and may be provided with coating layers on their outer circumferences or may be uncoated. The spool for winding an optical fiber comprises a set of spool bodies, each body formed as a barrel having a cylindrical shape and contacting the other body, a pad attached to outer circumferences of the barrels, and a cylindrical hub formed through the spool bodies in an axial direction.
One example of the aforementioned spool for winding optical fiber is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,036,138 entitled “Spool for Holding Winding of Optical Fiber” and patented on Mar. 14, 2000. A construction of the disclosed spool is shown in FIGS. 1 and 2. The spool 1 comprises two flanges 1a and 1b, each having an outer tube 5 with a respective welding surface 4. The first and second flanges 1a, 1b are jointed together so that their welding surfaces 4 are mutually engaged, and then welded. A pad 3 is wound around the outer tubes 5, and optical fiber 6 is wound around the pad. However, the heating process for welding the flanges 1a, 1b complicates assembly of the spool 1. Further, it is impossible to disassemble the spool for re-welding if the flanges 1a, 1b were misaligned, which leads to a high defect rate for the product.
Another example of a spool for winding an optical fiber is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,908,172, entitled “Spool for Fiber Optic Media” and patented on Jun. 1, 1999. As illustrated in FIG. 3, the spool 10 comprises two flanges 11, 12 provided with winding drums 11a, 12a. The spool 10 further includes interlocking means 13 for selectively interlocking face-to-face or disengaging the winding drums 11a, 12a of the flanges 11, 12.
However, a mold is needed to manufacture the interlocking means 13, which increases the number of components. This increases assembly time and the difficulty in treating components, and, concomitantly, production cost.